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School of Education
UW -Madison > School of Ed > About --> At-a-Glance

The School of Education At a Glance

Contents:

Organization

Dean: Julie Underwood, since August 2005

Eight Departments:

Three Research Centers:

The School offers an array of programs.  In fact, about half of its undergraduates are enrolled in non-teacher-certification programs such as art, dance, and exercise science.  In addition, the School houses units that serve the broader community, such as the Cooperative Children’s Book Center (CCBC), Tandem Press, the Arts Institute, Recreational Sports, the Testing & Evaluation Center, Education Outreach and Partnerships, and Media, Education Resources & Information Technology (MERIT). 

The School also houses Student Diversity Programs, which is the administrative hub of campus-wide initiatives that serve K-12 through graduate students.  These include programs such as the Office of Multicultural Arts Initiatives, PEOPLE and Posse.

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VITAL STATISTICS

Fall Headcount Enrollment in 2008
Undergraduate 1,875
Graduate 1,092
Special Students 20
Total 2,987

Staff in Fall 2007
Faculty 139
Instructional Academic Staff 49
Other Academic Staff 198
Classified Staff 95
Graduate Assistants 156
Total 637

Degrees Granted 2007-08
Bachelor's 561
Master's 242
Ph.D. 55
Total 858

Number of Majors
43
Number of Alumni
44,450



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NATIONAL RANKINGS

The UW-Madison School of Education is consistently ranked one of the top schools of education in the nation. U.S. News & World Report’s ranking of graduate programs (Best Graduate School Choices for 2010) rated the School seventh in the nation and gave high marks to individual departments and programs.

Curriculum & instruction - #1
Educational psychology - #1
Counseling/personnel services - #2
Educational administration - #2
Elementary education - #2
Secondary education - #2
Educational policy - #3
Special education - #9

The individual rankings were based on a reputational survey completed by other education-school deans.

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RESEARCH

The Wisconsin Center for Education Research (WCER): WCER is one of the world’s oldest, largest, and most productive education research centers. Among the center’s more than 50 projects are:

  • Minority Student Achievement Network:  Housed in WCER since 2007, the network is a national coalition of multiracial, suburban-urban school districts that have come together to study achievement gaps in their own districts and to propose strategies to change school practices that keep these gaps in place.  Blending practice with research, the network has developed collaborative relationships with expert researchers to help identify successful interventions in closing the gaps.  Past funding provided by the National Science Foundation.

  • World-Class Instructional Design and Assessment (WIDA) Consortium:  The WIDA Consortium is dedicated to designing and implementing high standards and equitable educational opportunities for English language learners.  It has developed English language proficiency standards and an English language proficiency test aligned with those standards.  Originally established through a federal grant, WIDA currently comprises 20 partner states.  In the 2009-10 school year, WIDA expects to serve approximately 775,000 English language learners in kindergarten through grade 12.   

  • SCALE (Systemwide Change for All Learners and Educators):  This project received one of the largest federal grants ever given to the University – a $35 million National Science Foundation grant.  It partners UW-Madison with the University of Pittsburgh and with the school districts of Los Angeles, Denver, Providence and Madison.  During the project, university researchers, mathematicians and scientists are working with teachers to improve how math and science are taught in K−12 schools nationwide. 

The Center on Education and Work (CEW):  This center has provided career resources and training for educators in Wisconsin and beyond for more than 30 years.  Its resources include Wisconsin Careers, an interactive website that offers users information on more than 700 occupations and 3,400 postsecondary institutions, as well as self-assessments, links to job openings and much more.  Its annual Careers Conference serves more than 1,000 educators and career professionals from across the country.  

The Wisconsin Center for the Advancement of Postsecondary Education (WISCAPE): The School's newest center supports research on issues in higher education. In addition, its unique public-forum series engages policymakers from the university, the community, and government agencies in an ongoing dialogue about higher education.


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TEACHER PREPARATION & SERVICE TO SCHOOL PROFESSIONALS

Innovations in Teacher Preparation:  The School continually revamps its programs to help its future teachers succeed in today’s increasingly diverse classrooms, with innovations such as:

  • UW System Institute for Urban Education: Created in 2007 through a collaboration among the School of Education, UW-Milwaukee, and the UW System, the institute aims to provide future teachers with experiences that will encourage them to teach in diverse urban schools and will help them to succeed in these settings.  It offers pre-service teachers a Milwaukee-based residential training program that combines working in an urban school with experiential learning in an urban community. 
  • E-Portfolios:  These dynamic, web-based documents are powerful new tools for the job search.  With the assistance of staff in the Office of Education Portfolios and Career Services, each student creates his or her unique portfolio as part of a program to attain teacher certification.  E-portfolios promote student learning through reflection, and as job-search tools, they provide school administrators with easy, but secure, access to information about a job candidate that may include video clips of a student’s teaching experiences, examples of lesson plans, and much more. 
  • Professional Development Schools Partnership:  This partnership between the School of Education and seven Madison-area schools has created special learning communities for both teachers and teacher-preparation students.  Students participate in intensive teaching experiences that are designed to prepare them for careers in culturally diverse urban schools. 
  • Community-Based Practicum in Elementary Education:  This program gives all elementary education students experiences working with children and their parents in a community setting, such as a neighborhood center.   By joining children in a variety of out-of-school activities – in literacy, math, art, sports, drama – students see children learning in different ways and understand the need for a teacher’s involvement with parents and the community.

Working with Educators in the Field:  The School is committed to serving teachers, administrators, counselors, and other personnel in Wisconsin’s K−12 schools through efforts such as: 

  • Reading Recovery Research and Learning Center:  Established in 2006, the center prepares teachers to develop Reading Recovery Programs for their schools and districts.  It also conducts research on effective teaching techniques for struggling readers.  Reading Recovery is an intensive, short-term program for first-grade children who are having serious problems learning to read and write.  It has been shown effective in closing the achievement gap for ethnic, minority, and low-income students.  Research has also demonstrated its effectiveness with English language learners.
  • Professional Development: Each year, Education Outreach and Partnerships and other School units serve more than 4,000 professionals who attend workshops and conferences that help them stay up-to-date on issues in K−12 education. 
  • Master of Science for Professional Educators (MSPE): More than 40,000 Wisconsin teachers lack master's degrees. With the School's distance-education master's program, these teachers now have an opportunity to complete an advanced degree at UW-Madison, no matter where they live in the state. The two-year program combines course work delivered over the Internet during the school year with on-campus summer sessions.

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THE ARTS

The Department of Art, the Arts Institute, the Dance Program, and the Office of Multicultural Arts Initiatives have a significant impact on the arts on this campus and beyond.  Faculty, staff and students from all four units serve as some of the University’s best ambassadors, providing performances, exhibits, and other art experiences to people in Wisconsin and across the country.

  • The Department of Art: The department is one of UW-Madison’s largest instructional programs, serving more than 400 of the School’s undergraduates majoring in art, as well as students campuswide who select electives from nearly 100 art classes offered each semester.
  • The Arts Institute:  The institute integrates and fosters campus arts programs and serves as a resource to the campus and larger community, with programs such as its annual Wisconsin Film Festival.
  •  The Dance Program: UW-Madison was the first university to offer a degree in dance in 1926.  The program continues to flourish, preparing a new generation of dancers and choreographers, offering wildly popular dance classes to students campuswide, and enriching the community with outstanding performances.
  • The Office of Multicultural Arts Initiatives (OMAI): OMAI’s youth-centered programs empower students to find, share, and apply their voices through spoken word, hip-hop, and diverse art forms while also developing them as artists, scholars and leaders.  Founded in 2005, OMAI’s programs are expanding the dialogue on diversity and fostering a greater appreciation of multicultural art forms.

 

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PRE-COLLEGE PROGRAMS

  • PEOPLE Program (Pre-College Enrichment Opportunity Program for Learning Excellence):  Begun in 1999 with 66 ninth graders, today PEOPLE serves approximately 1,200 middle and high school students.  PEOPLE partners with public schools to identify academically promising young adults from culturally diverse and low-income backgrounds, and then provides these students with ongoing academic support, including tutoring and an on-campus summer enrichment program. Its mission is to help students successfully make each transition from middle school to high school to college.
  • POSSE Program:  UW-Madison was the first major public research institution to launch this unique program in 2002.  Now housed in the School of Education, the program identifies public high school students from Chicago and Los Angeles who show outstanding academic and leadership potential, but who may be overlooked by the traditional college selection process.  On campus, students are placed in supportive, multi-cultural teams that support academic excellence and foster a commitment to positive social change.
  • Education Outreach and Partnerships Pre-College Programs:  In addition to its professional development offerings for educators, the office provides academic enrichment opportunities for students in grades 5-8, including two popular summer programs – College for Kids and Technology & Arts. 

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